How Do We Talk About God?

Jack Rogers

My first General Assembly as a comm1ss10ner, 1971, had most of the dramatic elements that would occupy my attention for the next thirty years. We made very positive history by electing the first woman moderator of the Presbyterian Church in its 183-year history. We had been ordaining women as elders since 1930, but no woman elder had been elected moderator until Lois Stair, a highly competent and good humored elder from Wisconsin, was handed the gavel. She represented the solid core of women who, throughout history, had been doing much of the work of the church with little recognition. We made a decision that, from then on, opened the highest level of leadership in the Presbyterian community to women who make up over half its members. We also spent a great deal of time in 1971 talking about another woman. Her name was Angela Davis. This black woman was a Communist and was charged with complicity in a murder. The Council on Church and Race had made a grant of $10,000 to her legal defense fund. The issue for the members of the council was simply whether this black woman could get a fair trial. From the hours of debate at the assembly and the huge controversy that erupted in the church at large, it was clear that there were other issues. Should the church be involved in American society as an agent of change? At another level, for some people, the question was, perhaps, should the church be involved with people who disagree with us politically and are not part of our community? In a church that is 96 percent Caucasian and whose members dominantly vote Republican, what business do we have in being, in any way, related to Angela Davis? It was ultimately determined that the members of the Council of Church and Race had acted properly. They had followed all of the guidelines pertaining to grants. Even so, the members of the council repaid the $10,000 out of their own pockets. But that did not quell the controversy. For some people who lived through that era, the 183rd General Assembly is still known as the Angela Davis Assembly. The conflict between understanding the church as a place primarily for personal religion and seeing it as an agent of social involvement was so heightened at the 1971 assembly that it set a template of tension that persists to this day. We also began a process of reorganizing the church in 1971. I have lived through three major reorganizations since then and have been a participant in one of them. The result of the restructuring in 1971 was to take power away from staff leaders. We passed the proposal to reorganize in about ten minutes, since most of us did not really understand the implications of it. The issue of distrust

75 between the elected governing bodies and the staff that serve the church is an ongoing struggle. The difference between what I experienced at the assembly and the later reports about it sensitized me to the need to learn about issues in the church at first hand. It began my career as a "General Assembly junkie" that now extends to thirty-one assemblies. But at that first assembly I was overwhelmed with the mass of data, the complexity of the issues, the rapid pace of the business, and the depth of emotions displayed. I had an intuition then, and I am even more convinced now, that underlying all of these sociological, psychologieal, and political issues were bedrock theological concerns. How do we think and speak about God? How do we understand and interpret the revelation of God in the Bible? It is to these issues that we now turn. My personal history was at a decisive turning point in 1971. After teaching at a Presbyterian school, Westminster College in New Wilmington, Penn­ sylvania, for eight years, I accepted an invitation to teach philosophy of religion at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. Fuller was a non­ denominational, evangelical seminary about which I had known little. A visit convinced me that it was not a fundamentalist institution, as many thought. I decided I could learn and grow with the colleagues I met. I found that I was able to be my Presbyterian self. At my suggestion, Moderator Lois Stair was invited to address the students at Fuller, and she came. If one had taken a photograph of the people at Fuller Seminary in 1971, it would have looked pretty much like most theological seminaries prior to that time. There were twenty white men on the faculty. There were about 250 students in the School of Theology. Only two were women-both, I believe, in the two-year Master of Arts program. Underneath the surface, women's concerns were boiling. Students' wives were asking for more attention to their presence and role. Some of their hus­ bands, who were officers in the student government, came to me and asked me to teach a course on the subject of women's liberation. I responded that a woman should do that. They argued that there were no women faculty and that to have credibility the course had to be taught by a regular faculty member. (Notice who had the power and who decided what action was proper.) I was new and didn't know where I fit in the curriculum beyond my required course in philosophical theology. So, I agreed. My theory was that it was probably better to do something badly rather than not at all. Six people signed up for the course-the two women students, and some of the husbands who had agitated for it. The first night, fifty-eight people showed up, nearly all of them women. I felt the tension in the room. These women were not about to give me power over them by registering officially, but they wanted to know what was going on. For the next nine weeks, the attendance averaged more than fifty persons, with some nights reaching a hundred. I decided that first night that l would not "teach" the course. Instead, I convened, moderated, communicated data from outside sources, and invited

76 those with expertise to share it. Women carried the dis ...... cuss1on. All va 1ue Judgments and ethical dec1s1ons were the1rs to make. We ·d "fi d . h h . . 1 enti 1e wit t e concerns of the women's hberat10n movement. I offered no crif . . . d . 1que. Th e most dIScouragmg part came m ea 1mg with the biblic 1 d t A h t point the attendance dropped by half. During the following wee~ I ;0~·call~ ~:d notes from many of the women who had absented themselves h · · Sh "d "I h b b h · 0 ne was c aractert~hc. e s~1 , ave e.en . eate~ overt e head with the Apostle Paul so many times that I JUSt couldn't nsk 1t agam." When we came to theological reconstruction, we needed to hear from a woman. The only feminist professor I could identify in the area was Patricia Doyle, from the neighboring School of Theology at Claremont, California. Claremont had a liberal reputation, just as Fuller wore a conservative label. I had no history with these characterizations, so I invited her to speak. She provided insights from a distinctly feminine perspective in a way that few men could have. She even said that men were also oppressed by the roles society assigned them. When a male anthropologist had earlier said the same thing, he was met with legitimate resistance, because it seemed like too easy a way to pass over the very real problems of women. Professor Doyle left us with two questions: ( 1) Can we appreciate the differences in persons without denying their equality? (2) Can we allow all persons to experience the wholeness that salvation offers? The reverberations of those questions continued in the student body and in my mind during the weeks that followed. I wrote an article about my experience for Presbyterian Life, published in July, 1972. It was titled, "Just Treat Them like Blacks: A White Male's Re­ sponse to Women's Liberation."2 I reflected: "I think that women are now asking to be treated like black people. They want to define their own roles rather than have us do it for them .... They want to be treated as persons, with the same opportunities, privileges, and responsibilities as other persons.',J It is hard to remember now how we in the church then were struggling with the movement for racial equality. For most of us, the issue of the genuine equality of women was less familiar still. Faculty and students at Fuller Seminary were quickly confronted with the reality of women seeking to study theology and desiring ministry in the church. In 1972, seventeen women enrolled. The next year there were fifty-three. It was a time of explosive growth in numbers and in racial, ethnic, and gender diversity. In five years, the seminary grew from 250 to 1,500 students, and at least 350 of them were women. By my second year at Fuller, I had identified some gaps I could fill in the curriculum. I offered a Wednesday evening course entitled Theological Models. It featured guest lecturers in areas not covered by the regular Fuller faculty. The dean gave me a modest budget so I could at least take these guests out to dinner. I brought in a Pentecostal theologian, an African American to explain black theology, and others to teach from their perspectives aspects of theology not covered by the Fuller faculty. Within a few years Fuller had hired faculty in

77 many of those areas, but, at the time, I was providing something that the students wanted and the dean supported. As the only feminist theologian in the area that I knew, I invited Professor Doyle again to lecture on that topic. Patricia Doyle was teaching psychology of religion at Claremont. She was also an active Presbyterian and on the national Committee on Women in the Church, which asked the General Assembly in I 973 to study language about God. The assembly mandated the Committee on Women in the Church and the Advisory Council on Discipleship and Worship to appoint and staff a Task Force on Language about God. Six women and three men were selected. I was the "token" evangelical invited because Patricia Doyle knew me. For me that was the beginning of three decades of stimulating and satisfying participation in the life of the Presbyterian Church at the national level. The group included Katie Cannon, an African American woman theologian; Margaret Towner, the first woman ordained in the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A.; and Anne Bennett, the wife of John Bennett, the retired president of Union Theological Seminary in New York.4 I quickly learned that each of the members had significant competencies. Anne Bennett, for example, was a scholarly theologian and a feminist long before Betty Friedan and others created the terminology and a national consciousness. Serving on this task force was the beginning of my real education in things Presbyterian. The chair of the task force was Joe Dempsey. He had made his money as a petroleum geologist, read philosophy for fun, and now was a consultant to philanthropic foundations. Joe gave thirty to forty days a year pro bona to the church serving on various committees, councils, and task forces. He became my mentor in Presbyterian politics. He taught me how the system worked, formally and informally. I benefited from experiencing the group's process. I was especially challenged to understand in more depth the nature of language. I perceived that words have power to injure or enable people. I learned that one of the fundamental issues imbedded in all of our controversies is whether people feel included or excluded. The conclusion to my earlier Presbyterian Life article became a counsel that has served me well for thirty years in the church. "We men had better concentrate on the prior religious task, confessing our own sins and freshly perceiving that in the gospel the whole person, the one who is part of God's program, very often turns out to be a Samaritan, or a black person, or a woman."5 Members of the task force were invited to contribute papers expressing their perspectives. For me, this was an exciting, and daunting, opportunity to share my thoughts with such knowledgeable and experienced people. My effort, entitled, "Is God A Man?" became a significant step for me in applying what I already knew about language from philosophy and what I was gleaning from anthropologists, linguists, and my colleagues on the task force. Betty Friedan, speaking to a rally in New York City on the first Women's Liberation Day, August 26, 1970, said, "I think the great debate of the 1970s will

78 be 'Is God He?"' That certainly described the situation in the Presbyterian Church. I was helped by noting a convergence of scholarship on this issue from two different fields: linguistics and philosophy of language. The somewhat technical discussion that follows is necessary as background to some of the practical conflicts that arise in biblical translation and interpretation. Traditional grammar (philology), in which most of us were trained, assumes a picture theory of meaning. Language is composed of signs (words) that name objects, and of statements that represent the relationship between objects. Language is thus like a map of reality. It is assumed that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the signs (words) and the things they signify. The model for all language in philology (traditional grammar) is written language, with roots in Greek and Latin. Literary usage in philosophy and the humanities sets standards for language use. The underlying assumption is an evolution oflanguages (and cultures) from "primitive" to "civilized." Descriptive linguistics challenges most of the assumptions of traditional philology. Linguistics in the United States really took hold with the discovery that the spoken languages of American Indians are very sophisticated, but very different from the European literary models. Linguistics attempts to describe the structure of languages based on observation of native speakers in the field. Descriptive linguistics teaches that exact correspondence between a given word in one language and a precise equivalent in another language is often impossible. Thus, the focus is not on words but on meaning at the level of ideas and concepts. Largely through the use of linguistic techniques developed in the twentieth century, some part of the Bible is now available in 2,303 of the world's nearly 6,500 languages.6 Groups such as the United Bible Societies and Wycliffe Bible Translators pour tremendous energy and skill into the complex task of presenting the biblical revelation in different languages and cultures. Eugene A. Nida, former secretary for translations with the American Bible Society, led in developing practical applications of the theories of descriptive linguistics. His book, The Theory and Practice of Translation, written with Charles R. Taber, was the standard guide. 7 The formal correspondence theory of translation, rooted in philology, focuses primarily on the source language. Attention is on the needs of the scholar. It is an attempt to be as faithful as possible to the precise language of the past. The dynamic equivalence theory of translation, developed by linguists, focuses on the receptor language. Attention is on the needs of the contemporary reader. The goal is to produce in the hearts and minds of present day people an effect equivalent to that produced by the original author on the original readers. 8 A good translation should not sound like a translation at all. It should speak to readers now. That requires not only translation, but transculturation-applying the meaning from another, perhaps ancient, culture to a corresponding situation in contemporary culture. 9 There are striking similarities between the principles of descriptive linguistics and an influential school of philosophy-linguistic analysis. One of

79 the most significant philosophers of the twentieth century was the late Ludwig Wittgenstein. In Philosophical Investigations, finished in 1949 and published after Wittgenstein's death in 1951, he re-thought everything he had said previously about language. 10 In the numbered aphorisms of the Philosophical Investigations, we hear echoes of the same understanding of language found in descriptive linguistics. 'The speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life" (#23), is one insight. "The meaning of a word is its use in the language" (#43) was Wittgenstein's central principle. Using the example of the word "game," Wittgenstein rejected the theory that there is a one-to-one correspondence between words. He pointed out that there is no one thing in common to all that we can call a game. Instead we discover "family resemblances" and overlapping strands that bind !,'J'Oups of words together (#66, 67). Linguistic philosophy describes how words are used in their everyday contexts (# 116). What can we learn from this about biblical and theological language? The languages used in the Bible have the same excellencies and are subject to the same limitations as other natural languages. Nida comments, "What is really important is that these languages as used in the Bible employ words which have meaning only in terms of the cultural contexts in which the languages were used." 11 The writers of the Bible intended to be understood. They used words current in their time in ways that were effective for their purposes. The vocabularies and worldviews of the authors of the biblical texts were rooted in the experiences of people in their context and culture. The way the Bible uses gender-specific language is a case in point. "Most languages do not distinguish gender," according to Nida. 12 However, in Hebrew, gender attaches to every word. Hebrew (and Greek) culture in which the biblical materials arose were patriarchal. Thus, "Every verbal statement about God conveyed the idea that He was masculine."13 In a patriarchal culture, like the Hebrew, masculine gender was used to express value and to honor an object. "We may formulate the following principle: Whenever someone or something attained an unusual or elevated status, whether temporary or permanent, the scribes used the masculine plural suffixes in 'm' with reference to feminine words." 14 The practical consequence of this technical grammatical point caused the Task Force on Language about God to break up in laughter one day. Anne Bennett pointed us to I Samuel 6. The Philistines had captured the ark of the Lord from the Israelites and held it for seven months. God was sending plagues on the Philistines as a consequence, and they wanted to be rid of the ark. So they made a cart and put the ark on it, and attached two cows to it to pull the ark back across the border into Israel. The text records: "They took two milch cows and yoked them to the cart, and shut up their calves at home ....The cows went straight in the direction of Beth-shemesh [Israel] along one highway, lowing as they went" (II Sam. 6: 10-12). Anne noted that as soon as a cow, a feminine gender word, was yoked to the cart carrying the ark of the Lord a masculine form

80 of the pronominal suffix was attached to it. This occurs in some four hundred instances throughout the Hebrew Bible. Whenever something described by a feminine word was really important, especially to be reverenced, it had masculine suffixes attached to it. Culture influences language. Language in turn conditions our ideas about God. It is not surprising, therefore, that the principal biblical symbols for God are masculine-Father, Brother, Kinsman, King, Judge, Shepherd, etc. Surprisingly, there are some remarkable exceptions to the predominantly masculine symbols for God in the Bible. My female colleagues on the Task Force on Language about God drew my attention to a forceful array of biblical images that describe God and God's activity as "feminine." For example: "You shall suck, you shall be carried on her hip, and dandled upon her knees. As one whom his mother comfotis, so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem" (Isaiah 66: 12-13). Scripture describes the saving activity of God as a mother giving birth (Isaiah 46:3-4, 66:7-14; John 3:3-8; 16:19-22; Romans 8:22- 23). The Hebrew people believed that God was present and acted in the world through Torah (Teaching), Chokmah (Wisdom), Shekinah (God's indwelling Presence), Bat kol (Voice), Ruah (Spirit), and Rehem (Mercy or Compassion). All of these Hebrew words are feminine gender. Jesus used a woman as a symbol of God in the parable of the lost coin (Luke 15: 8-10). The task force presented its report to the General Assembly in 1975. The report began with certain presuppositions that members of the task force held in common, despite our wide variety of backgrounds, tradition, and experience. Regarding language, our central presupposition was "that theological language is analogous, symbolical and metaphorical, never purely univocal, literal and direct." 15 Regarding the influence of language on women, the task force members shared the view that "language describing God as male ... has been, and is, a main source and support for patriarchal cultures in which woman is considered a sub-species, an 'other,' who is subordinate and inferior to man."16 The report was entitled, "Language About God---Opening the Door." I was asked by the task force to speak to the report from the platform. The idea was that my being from Fuller Seminary and known as an evangelical might help those on the more conservative side of the spectrum to be open to our repo1i and recommendations. I felt honored and challenged to do my best. The task force strategy did not prevent a friend of mine from seminary days from filing a minority report. Jerry Kirk was often a spokesperson for those of a traditional, evangelical persuasion. I thought of myself as an evangelical. In this case, however, Kirk's evangelical assumptions caused him to react negatively both to the task force's understanding of language and our perception of the appropriate role of women in the church. 17 The assembly received the task force's majority report and adopted its nine recommendations. In addition to asking that the report be made available for study, the Task force recommended that the 187th General Assembly (1975) create a new three-year study of "the cultural and theological implications and

81 impact of our changing language about God for the total life of the people of God." 18 A new committee of eight men and women with two staff persons was fonned and in 1979 presented a paper entitled, "The Power of Language Among the People of God." This resource document was published with the earlier 1975 report for congregational and governing body study. The Presbyterian Church continued to make slow but steady progress in opening to and using inclusive language. Most people were comfortable with inclusive language for people. Inclusive language for God remained a more difficult issue. In 1980 the General Assembly requested that materials be developed for a new service book, psalter, and hymnal that would use inclusive language for both people and God. The National Council of Churches produced An Inclusive Language Lectionmy that made significant changes in the language about God, e.g. speaking of God as both Father [and Mother]. 19 A year after the 1983 merger of the Northern (UPCUSA) and Southern (PCUS) streams of Presbyterianism, the General Assembly received the lectionary as an experiment. The action of the Presbyterian Church made clear, however, that Father/Son/Holy Spirit language was to be retained in the baptismal formula. That assembly also asked the Advisory Council on Discipleship and Worship (former UPCUSA) and the Council on Theology and Culture (former PCUS) to develop and provide a working definition of "inclusive language." The 1985 General Assembly received the "Definitions and Guidelines on Inclusive Language" requested the previous year. Regarding "Inclusive language with reference to God," the report recommended "language which intentionally seeks to express the diverse ways the Bible and our theological tradition speaks about God: e.g., one who delivers, champions, and befriends as well as 'Savior' and 'Lord'; one who acts as guardian, parent, begetter and bearer of children as well as 'Creator' and 'Heavenly Father'; one who serves as rock, shelter, fortress as well as 'the Almighty' or 'King."' 20 In 1987, the General Assembly approved a series of supplementary liturgical resources that were inclusive in their language. Then, from 1988 until its final adoption in 1991, "A Brief Statement of Faith-Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)" kept before the church both a style of inclusive language and the use of feminine as well as masculine images for God. The issue of language about God was the most contentious issue faced by the Special Committee to Prepare a Brief Statement of the Reformed Faith. I had the privilege of serving on the committee and participated in its struggles. During a meeting in May 1986, in Denver, some men on the committee attempted to get a commitment from the group that the committee would not abandon Father language for God. To my knowledge, no one on the committee had any intention of doing so. This pre-emptive action disturbed the women, however, and for the first time they caucused separately. At the next meeting, after much discussion, the issue remained unresolved. No drafts of a confession

82 presented were deemed suitable as a basis for the committee's work. We seemed to be at a crisis point. 21 Roland Frye, emeritus professor of English at the University of Penn­ sylvania, was a member of the special committee and one of those most concerned about the use of feminine language for Goel. Roland was an expert on Milton and Shakespeare and looked the part of the professor, with his white hair and glasses, his proper attire and pipe. He loved language and was theologically learned as well. He presented a paper to the committee entitled, "Language for Goel and Feminist Language: Problems and Principles."22 Frye's paper argued for a distinction between metaphor and simile. "In metaphor and naming, the Scriptures again and again call God 'Father'; occasionally they also compare him with a mother (whether avian or human) by the use of simile." 23 For Frye, "The basic distinction lies between the operations of simile/com~aring (mother) and metaphor/naming (father), and the meanin?s they convey." 4 Frye argued that metaphors use "language at full stretch."2 He then said, "So understood, the predicating metaphors Goel the Father and the Son of God become trans­ parent to the divine reality, words by which the divine persons are called, addressed, recognized, or known." 26 Frye presented in a very sophisticated manner the sort of argument that was being made against inclusive language for God by other mainline theologians in the 1980s. Donald Bloesch, a minister in the United Church of Christ teaching at Presbyterian Dubuque Theological Seminary, wrote two books: Is the Bible Sexist?27 and The Battle for the Trinity: The Debate over Inclusive God­ Language.28 In the latter work, Bloesch maintained that "when Father refers to God, especially in the context of devotion, the word is not figurative, but close to being literal in that it is practically transparent to what it signifies."29 He feared that any change from present masculine language would lead to a resurgence of the goddess religion of Near Eastern fertility cults. 30 Elizabeth Achtemeier, an adjunct professor of biblical studies and preaching at Union Seminary in Richmond, also argued that any use of feminine language for God would lead to goddess worship. She asserted that the biblical writers "had ample evidence from the religions surrounding them that female language for the deity results in a basic distortion of the nature of God and of his relation to his creation."31 Frye, Bloesch, and Achtemeier all were using the framework of philology, where the word is a picture of the object. In addition, they treated masculine words used for Goel as having a transparent quality. 32 They asserted that Goel had chosen to name himself (in Hebrew and Greek) using masculine gender, and that we dare not do otherwise. The picture of God that they saw in Scripture had masculine characteristics that they believed we are obligated to honor. The Task Force on a Brief Statement of the Reformed Faith made every effort to accommodate the concerns both of those who insisted on masculine language for Goel and of those who wished to broaden our understanding of God by using feminine imagery found in Scripture. In this process, the task force

83 effectively understood biblical language as the descriptive linguists did-a human, culture-bound way of pointing to the reality and richness of the revelation of God in Scripture. In August, 1987, the committee spent a week together at Mo Ranch, a Presbyterian conference center in Hunt, Texas. It was hot, hot, hot. We worked fourteen-hour days and went swimming at midnight. During this time, a series of compromises were developed that enabled the group to move fo1ward in finalizing a draft. Jesus' reference to God as "Abba, Father" was introduced. Adding "Abba" (an intimate word like "Daddy" or "Poppa") showed that "Father" did not refer to a punitive patriarch but a loving parent whom one could address with intimacy. The traditional liturgical "Gloria" with its Father, Son, and Holy Spirit language was accepted as a link to the ecumenical Christian tradition. It became the concluding line.33 The Special Committee sent a draft to the denomination in February 1988 and asked for comments. During the fall we reflected on the more than 16,000 responses, evidence of tremendous interest in the church. At the last meeting of the committee before sending its final draft to the General Assembly, December 3, 1988, the Gloria in the last line of the text became a reservoir from which all of the previous sensitivities now re-emerged. Responses from the church to the previous draft had given evidence that the Gloria was a problem for a significant minority. For two hours the Committee debated what could be done. It appeared that the hard-won unanimity that had been achieved might be lost in the final moments. Then a brilliant, Presbyterian compromise was proposed that rescued the integrity of the draft and the unanimity of the committee. An asterisk was affixed to the final line (line 80), and a footnote was added that reads, "*Instead of saying this line, congregations may wish to sing a version of the Gloria." Most people would never even notice the footnote, but those for whom it offered relief valued it. A female colleague next to me turned and said, "I can't sing worth a dam, but I'm going to learn." Quickly, the final section of the text was adopted as a whole.34 A Brief Statement of Faith--Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), was adopted in 1991. In addition to the passages noted above, for the first time in Reformed confessional literature, it used feminine as well as masculine images for God. In line 49, the confession draws on Isaiah 49: 15-16, saying that God is "like a mother who will not forsake her nursing child." In line 50 the confession refers to the well-known passage from Luke 15:11-32, saying "Like a father who runs to welcome the prodigal home." The point in each case is clear in line 51, "God is faithful still." The confession thus points to the reality of a personal God whose love exceeds that of every human mother and father. It seemed to me that all I had experienced on the Task Force on Language about God had come to positive fruition in the Brief Statement. In understanding language about God as they did, the members of the Task Force on a Brief Statement of the Reformed Faith followed a precedent set by the early church theologians and the Protestant Reformers. The early church

84 theologians and the Protestant Refonners used the concept of accommodation to explain the manner of God's communication with us. They said that God speaking to us in Scripture is like a parent talking to children, a physician speaking to patients, like a teacher addressing students. In each case, the person with greater knowledge accommodates, adapts, condescends to use language understandable by the person with lesser knowledge. Jesus' parables are a prime example. This accommodation is done, not to deceive, but to communicate truth with clarity. John Calvin expressed this understanding of the limitations of our language. Like Origen, Chrysostom, and Augustine before him, Calvin used human metaphors to describe God's communication with humans. Calvin said of the biblical way of speaking: "For who even of slight intelligence does not understand that, as nurses commonly do with infants, God is wont in a measure to 'lisp' in speaking to us? Thus such forms of speaking do not so much express clearly what God is like as accommodate the knowledge of him to our slight capacity. To do this he must descend far beneath his loftiness."35 God's method of communication, for Calvin, was "to represent himself to us not as he is in himself, but as he seems to us."36 In terms of official policy, by 1991, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) had succeeded in moving to the use of inclusive language for both people and God. The movement was not accomplished without significant resistance both from within the Presbyterian Church and in the larger culture. Two issues remained intertwined: The nature of language and thus the nature of biblical language and whether there needed to be some sort of hierarchical relationship between men and women in home and church. Those issues remain in discussion among Christian people today. "I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst" (Hosea 11 :9). I concluded my paper in 1974, and conclude this one, by saying: "God is not a man. Nor is God a woman. God is the Holy One about whom we can speak only in symbols, analogies, and metaphors. We need continually to seek out those symbols in Scripture and society which will enable us to express all the personal presence of God whom we know personally." 37 Let me end on a personal note. I first met Sonja Stewart in 1963 when I came to teach at Westminster College in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania. We were both living there, starting our careers, raising our children, and worshiping in the same congregation. Later, Sonja and I worked together in a special program for writing cases and teaching by the case study method while I was at Fuller Seminary. We have remained friends, and our paths have intersected many times during the years discussed in this article. My wife and I applaud her contribution to supporting children in worship. Her work helpfully extends our understanding of how language functions in the context of life. I offer this article as a tribute to her friendship and to her creative, innovative leadership as a Christian educator.

85 ENDNOTES

1 Change continues to come slowly. We have ordained women as ministers of Word and Sacrament since 1956. It was not until this year, 2003, that a woman minister was elected moderator of the General Assembly. The Reverend Susan Andrews's election manifested another move forward in making the Presbyterian community more genuinely representative of its membership. Does it always take more than a generation from the time we decide to open the community to new leadership before we implement that decision? 2 Jack B. Rogers, "Just Treat Them like Blacks: A White Male's Response to Women's Liberation," Presbyterian Life, vol. 25, 10 (July, 1972), 16-18, 64. 3 Rogers, "Just Treat Them like Blacks," 16. 4 Those appointed were the Rev. Ms. Elizabeth D. Beck, Mrs. Anne Bennett, Ms. Katie G. Cannon, the Rev. Ms. Patricia Doyle, Ms. Jennifer Frost, Dr. Bryant George, the Rev. Jack Rogers, the Rev. Ms. Margaret Towner, Mr. Joe G. Dempsey. Staff were Ms. Virginia Kelley Mills from the Council on Women in the Church, and the Rev. James G. Kirk, Advisory Council on Discipleship and Worship. 5 Rogers, "Just Treat Them like Blacks," 64. 6 This statistic is from April, 2003. The whole Bible, at that time, was available in 405 languages, and the New Testament existed in 1,034 languages. Hundreds of translation projects are continually underway. 7 Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1969. 8 Eugene Nida "coined the term dynamic equivalence translation to describe a 'meaning-based' approach to translation-one that looks for functional equivalence rather than formal resemblance in translation." Interview by David Neff, "Meaning­ full Translations," Christianity Today (October 7, 2002), 46. 9 Nida commented, "Words only have meanings in terms of the culture of which they are a part. Language is a paii of culture. Therefore, we have to understand the cultures of the New Testament period if we're going to understand what the writers were trying to say." Cited in conversation with Neff, Christianity Today (October 7, 2002), 46. 10 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. by G.E.M. Anscombe, 2nd ed. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1953). 11 Nida and Taylor, 7. 12 Eugene A. Nida, Customs and Cultures (New York: Harper & Row, 1954), 200. 13 Raphael Patai, The Hebrew Goddess (New York: KTA V, 1967), 21. 14 Mayer G. Slonim, "The substitution of the Masculine for the Feminine Hebrew Pronomial Suffixes to Express Reverence," Jewish Quarterly Review, vol. 29, (1938- 39), 400. 15 Reports to the General Assembly (1975), Advisory Council on Discipleship and Worship, "Language About God," C-15. 16 Reports to the General Assembly (1975), Advisory Council on Discipleship and Worship, "Language About God," C-16. 17 Reports to the General Assembly (1975), Advisory Council on Discipleship and Worship, "Language About God," Minority Report, C-21.

86 18 Reports to the General Assembly ( 1975), Advisory Council on Discipleship and Worship, "Language About God," Recommendations, C-18, C-19. 19 An Inclusive-Language Lectionmy- Readings for Year B (prepared for experimental and voluntary use in churches by the Inclusive-Language Lectionary Committee appointed by the Division of Education and Ministry, National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Published for the Cooperative Publication Association by John Knox Press, The Pilgrim Press, The Westminster Press, 1984), 8. The text employed brackets to indicate a word that had been added. 20 Reports to the General Assembly ( 1985), Joint Report, Advisory Council on Discipleship and Worship; Council on Theology and Culture, "Response to Inclusive language Referral," pp. 419-20. ll Jack Rogers, Presbyterian Creeds: A Guide to the Book of Confessions (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1991), 242-43. 22 Roland M. Frye, "Language for God and Feminist Language: Problems and Principles," unpublished paper presented to the Special Committee on a Brief Statement of the Reformed Faith, March 9, 1987. 23 Ibid., 26. 24 Ibid., 26. 25 Ibid., 30. 26 Ibid., 30. 27 Westchester, Illinois: Crossway Books, 1982. 28 Ann Arbor, Michigan: Servant Publications, 1985. 29 Bloesch, The Battle for the Trinity, 35. 30 Bloesch, The Battle for the Trinity, 11. 31 Elizabeth Achtemeier, "Female Language for God: Should the Church Adopt it?" in The Hermeneutical Quest: Essays in Honor ofJames Luther Mays on His Sixty­ Fifih Birthday, ed. Donald G. Miller (Allison Park, PA: Pickwick Publications, 1986), 109. 32 Frye, for example, acknowledges many metaphors for Jesus Christ, such as shepherd, lamb, bread oflife, light of the world, the door, the vine. He notes that these metaphors are comparisons that expand the meaning of the object "into new contexts and perceptions" (p. 27). When he comes to the Father metaphor, he changes the definition, saying, "But in the case of direct biblical references to the Deity, metaphor usually separates from all others" (p. 30). On linguistic grounds, I am not persuaded by Frye's distinction between simile and metaphor. Both simile and metaphor are forms of analogy that say something is like something else. It does not matter whether we employ the word "like" or "is." 33 Rogers, Presbyterian Creeds, 245. 34 Rogers, Presbyterian Creeds, 253. 35 John Calvin, Institutes ofthe Christian Religion, ed. by John T. McNeil!, translated Ford Lewis Battles, vol. XX, The Library of Christian Classics (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960) 1.13.l. 36 Institutes 1.17 .13. 37 Jack B. Rogers, "Is God A Man?" (Unpublished paper presented to the Task Force on Language About God, 1974), 18.

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